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NPR
Shorter prison sentences for nonviolent criminals, more programs to treat those convicted of low-level drug-related crimes and reductions in the number of crimes that carry "mandatory minimum sentences." Those are among the things Attorney General Eric Holder will suggest Monday when he addresses the American Bar Association in San Francisco.NPR's Carrie Johnson previewed Holder's address for Morning Edition last Wednesday. Monday, The Associated Press added some more details about what he's planning to say — based on his remarks "as prepared for delivery." The wire service writes that:
— Holder will say he's changing Justice Department policy "so that low-level, non-violent drug offenders with no ties to large-scale organizations, gangs or cartels won't be charged with offenses that impose mandatory minimum sentences."
Reuters
The Justice Department plans to change how it prosecutes some non-violent drug offenders, ending a policy of mandatory minimum prison sentences, in an overhaul of federal prison policy that Attorney General Eric Holder will unveil on Monday.Holder will outline the status of a broad, ongoing project intended to improve Justice Department sentencing policies across the country in a speech to the American Bar Association in San Francisco.
"I have mandated a modification of the Justice Department's charging policies so that certain low-level, nonviolent drug offenders who have no ties to large-scale organizations, gangs, or cartels, will no longer be charged with offenses that impose draconian mandatory minimum sentences," Holder said in remarks prepared for delivery at the conference.
The Guardian
The US government took the first tentative steps toward tackling its 1.5m-strong prison population on Monday by announcing that minor drug dealers would be spared the mandatory minimum sentences that have previously locked up many for a decade or more.Reversing years of toughening political rhetoric in Washington, attorney general Eric Holder declared that levels of incarceration at federal, state and local levels had become both "ineffective and unsustainable."
The Department of Justice will now instruct prosecutors to side-step federal sentencing rules by not recording the amount of drugs found on non-violent dealers not associated with larger gangs or cartels.
"Our system is in many ways broken," Holder told the American Bar Association in San Francisco. "As the so-called war on drugs enters its fifth decade we need to ask whether it has been fully effective and usher in a new approach."
BBC
The Obama administration has unveiled major changes to the criminal justice system, dropping mandatory minimum sentences in certain drug cases.Such terms will not be imposed for non-violent drug offenders with no gang or cartel ties, Attorney General Eric Holder said in a speech.
The US has one of the world's biggest prison populations, despite a 40-year-low in the country's crime rates.
Critics say that heavy drug sentences have hit minorities hardest.
"We need to ensure that incarceration is used to punish, deter and rehabilitate - not merely to convict, warehouse and forget," Mr Holder said in a speech to the American Bar Association in San Francisco on Monday.
Al Jazeera
US Attorney General Eric Holder has called for major changes to the country's criminal justice system, announcing measures aimed at easing prison overcrowding.The measures will scale back the use of harsh prison sentences for certain drug-related crimes, divert people convicted of low-level offences to drug treatment and community service programmes and expand a prison programme to allow for release of some elderly, non-violent offenders.
In a speech at the American Bar Association in San Francisco on Monday, Holder said he is mandating a change to Justice Department policy so that low-level, non-violent drug offenders with no ties to large-scale organisations, gangs or cartels will not be charged with offences that impose mandatory minimum sentences.
Mandatory minimum prison sentences - a product of the government's war on drugs in the 1980s - limit the discretion of judges to impose shorter prison terms.
Under the altered policy, the attorney general said defendants will instead be charged with offences for which accompanying sentences "are better suited to their individual conduct, rather than excessive prison terms more appropriate for violent criminals or drug kingpins".